I Knew You Loved Me Then
by Aubretia Lycania
Summary: The point of view of Remus Lupin, now faced with the burden of a teenager in mourning and wanting nothing more than to be his werewolf protege, set in a world full of the cursed. The sequel to I Know the Truth Now.
1. It's marching through my door now

I Knew You Loved Me Then

Author 

Aubretia Lycania

Rating

This fic is written from the mind of Remus, an adult, and, as in life, the world as we perceive it becomes steadily more violent as we grow older. Plus, he cusses more. Bye-bye innocent musings of Harry—hello werewolf self-hate of Lupin. Enjoy.

Warnings 

Please do no read this fic if you haven't read OotP—not only will it not make sense if you haven't, but it will also spoil the book for you, which is a shame because it's one of Rowling's best. Also a bit slashy (Remus/Harry); I never intended it to be, but it's my favorite pairings and I tend to sneak it in subconsciously. If that bothers you, please don't read my fic and flame me on it. I'd rather have constructive criticism on my writing, not immature complaints about the subject matter. If ya don't like it, don't read it.

Oh, and kindly read "I Know the Truth Now," my other fanfiction, which is the prequel and partner to this story, before proceeding. If you already have, thank you! Also, I'd like to apologize for the… uh… two year gap. College is a pain.

Disclaimer 

I don't own any of these characters and situations, and if I did… I wouldn't need scholarships up the wahzoo. As a writer, I'd be pretty ticked off if someone stole my characters and made money off them. I'm just a fan. Besides, if Remus Lupin were mine, he'd be shackled up in a basement somewhere, waiting for me to snog and shag him.

The song is "Taking Over Me" by Evanescence, and I don't own it either. The chapter titles are from "Innocente" by Delirium—which also isn't mine.

**For Amity**

In French 

The English language possesses a concrete word to denote a farewell, whether for short or long term, know as "goodbye"; beyond this, phrases must be used to portray what kind of goodbye being used—_will I see you tomorrow, or shall I see you never? In the next life, perchance?_ The French phrase for a farewell, however, is "au revoir," meaning "until later," and follows one general assumption; that one will always see the other again, whether in this existence or the next, tomorrow or the day after. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the sequel to "I Know the Truth Now."

So, friend, you have returned—young Harry has graced you with a tale of the Marauders, of or betrayer's death. Perhaps you stopped and wondered about our pack, wished for the warmth and the heartache; perhaps you, like Harry, silently yearn for the stalking shadow to appear like the good Church Grim and make you what I am—to sink its teeth deep into the sultry satin that is your flesh, intoxicating with its hormones, sweet with its heat, acrid with salt and the ammonia secreted from your pores like a poison… enticing and repelling, even to myself. Perhaps you even wish for that shadow to be me. Congratulations, my friend. You're human—and you're beautiful.

You have heard Harry's part of the tale. Now, it's my turn.

Part One 

_I believe in you,_

_I'd give up everything just to find you…_

_I have to be with you,_

_To live, to breathe—_

_You're taking over me._

June sunlight twinkled congenially off gentle wind-swept ripples; it shone through brilliantly green leaves hanging high above, dipping down for a cool drink in the still, icy lake. Rushes swayed and the chance sleepy-eyed toad croaked, to answering calls of exuberant frogs cavorting in the murky shallows. Droplets sprayed in a sudden disturbance and, amid a few perked cattails, a pair of dark sunglasses floated to the surface to shine in the sun. Two hands dove for them at the same moment, then, amid calls and shrieks, two sleek young bodies, wet like the pelts of otters, toppled headlong into the water.

A head of tangled, dark red hair surfaced first; a girl, of seventeen or so years, with bright green eyes, dashed her glance about, half-smilingly, half-panicked.

"Jamie! My sister'll kill me if I lose those!" she protested at the second head, one of indecently untidy black hair and warmed by hazel eyes—a boy who grinned impishly at her, waving the sunglasses tantalizingly.

Lily Evans made a futile dive for them, soaked auburn tresses flying, to resounding shouts of laughter from shore. She swung around towards the source, eyes ablaze, a highland warrior chieftain of the Culloden days.

"Sirius, you'd better not be laughing!"

Another boy with black hair, that fell rather daringly into handsome pale blue eyes, closed his mouth with a fearful snap, scrambled onto a branch, and went back to trying (without success) at catching a frog, along with the occasional lobbing of some missile or other at a small, plump boy swinging in the branch of a tree. Peter Pettigrew squeaked as a yet more volleys of pebbles made it to his rump, nearly falling clear out of his perch. James Potter, still in the water, scowled a bit at Sirius in a regally confident fashion.

"Padfoot, give it a rest already, will you?" In his reprieve, Lily made another deft grab for the glasses, finally snatching them right out of James's hand in a glittering shower of droplets; she waved them gracefully, blazing with calm triumph, and splashed back onto the grass and rocks that overhung part of the lake. James, mock-scowling for the appreciation of his young courtship, laughed and disappeared again beneath the sun-glanced surface in a flash of Quidditch-tanned skin.

Remus Lupin looked over the top of his book as Lily sat down beside him on the warmed gray rock, though he needn't have—she was infectious, a travelling light that lingered like perfume long after she left the room, the electric spark left behind after the touch of another, the magic that flows in your veins realer than real. And while the others may have been undecided, he already knew deep within how much he enjoyed having a girl, this strange and compassionate and mothering creature, join the tight circle of Marauders. He often basked in the glow that Lily brought to them—their princess, their queen, beloved sister and matron and treasure, to protect them and be protected, cherished and guarded, with their lives if need be. Her smell was one he had long-since forgotten and began to rediscover with the enthusiasm of a child—hearth smells, comforting cloth and warmth and firelight; soft and dignified in pearls and silk that would swish lightly as water around her slim frame on special occasions; the wild smells of a girl unafraid of frog spawn and mud fights, raucous singing and the infrequent illicit draft of firewhiskey—sun-smelling oranges and lemons, dirt that caught under nails and in the creases of work robes, levitating sherbet balls, and the lilies from whence she got her name.

"Hey, Remus," she said gently after a few moments of congenial silence. She often spoke to him this way—soothingly and amiably, as a mother speaking to her sweetheart middle son. "You sad now we've graduated? The four of you won't be able to go on any adventures or play terrible pranks so much anymore."

Remus smiled shyly, clutching his book and watching their princess with adoring awe. "Well, yes… But at least James and Sirius won't be able to hold their marks over my head anymore."

Lily beamed indulgently and chuckled. "Those big-heads. Want me to punch their noses in?"

Remus brushed a strand of light brown hair out of his eyes as they lit up with the spark of her comfort. "That's okay, Lily, but I appreciate the offer. If they steal your sister's sunglasses again, just give the word and I'll eat them."

Lily rocked backward, her laughter a pleasantly tinkling bell, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. He felt himself blushing fiercely. "You're so sweet, Remus. I'll keep that in mind."

Suddenly Sirius clattered onto the rock, looking with mock disapproval on Remus and flopping down in the sun. "So, Moony, conspiring with the enemy now, eh? She hasn't even been properly voted in yet!"

Lily stood up, hands graciously poised on hips, towering above Sirius, and spoke with a fearsome, challenging timbre. "Oh, I haven't, have I?"

Sirius all but quaked in her very shadow, and James, who had emerged again beneath the low rock, treading water as he watched, nearly drowned with laughter.

"Hey, Padfoot, if she can scare you straight into a tree, she's pretty much in!" James called, spitting out the slightly sulfurous water carelessly.

Sirius played at looking wounded. "She never scared me into a tree! That's slander, sir! An insult!" He drew himself up straight, looking down his nose at James, unable to keep the grin from his face longer than the boy in the water.

Remus and Lily exchanged glances. Sirius held the blazing scent of acquiescence and play lightly on his skin, mingling comfortably with the gingery speckle of his pride and exotic taste that was his vibrant lust for love and life. He could quicken the most phlegmatic of blood, send sparks into the dullest eyes, he breathed confidence and imbued passion and intense heartbeat, the very essence of the floor on which the dancers of life moved in wild rhythm, glistening with sweat and tears and the cool water from a dip in the first and last Summer's day. "Seventeen forever," his blood whispered. And made you believe it.

In one lucid movement, Lily reached over and propelled Sirius face-first into the lake amid shouts and splashes, followed by throes of laughter. Remus shielded his book as the water reached its brisk hands towards them, rolling with mirth and applauding Lily's boldness with the offending Marauder. She bowed with remarkable grace and looked down into the pool, where Sirius and James re-emerged grinning—though the former had nearly landed clear on the latter's head.

"Yeah, Prongs, she's definitely a Marauder," Sirius said appraisingly. "What d'you think, Moony? Wormtail?"

Peter scurried uncertainly out of the tree, as though afraid he would again be pelted, and stood at the water's edge. "Oh… oh, yeah, definitely." He gazed at Lily adoringly and warily, like a branch fathoming the Heavens, fingers reaching and lingering just beyond the heights of understanding.

Remus looked on at her for a few moments, drinking her in again, squinting against the sunlight that framed her like a halo. "Yeah," he said simply after pondering, worrying at the tactility that he could nearly roll about in his fingers. "A Marauder to the end and beyond."

James grinned as he and Sirius wadded ashore. "You know my vote," he said, winking at Lily. "Besides, I'm not all that interested in getting hexed today. Unless old Snivellus is around to give it a go…" At Lily's resulting growl, he smiled charmingly. "Because I so… enjoy… his company…" The words seemed to cause both him and Sirius considerable pain, but appeased both comrades on the rock. James and Sirius joined them in their shorts, skins shining with beaded drops and rippling with gooseflesh—followed closely by Peter. They sat, five, simple youths with few demands, watching the sun as it slowly sank towards the tree line, sending flaming gold, rose, and orange shimmers across the lake as it rippled with teeming life and the unknown below. James shot an approving glance at Remus, who could want nothing more in that instant; the unobtrusive scent of spring mornings and breezes above the pitch, fresh grasses and strengthening sunlight greeting him at James's closeness, more exhilarating than the run and yet more, more peaceful than the deepest sleep yet it sent blood rushing through his very veins like a pounding, savage drum. Lily played with his untamable black hair contentedly, her green eyes orbs of promise and hope as they gazed into that everlasting sunset. The warmth of their bodies came together to form a pocket of protection against the gales of the world; silently their souls howled in unison, together challenging all that came their way, ready to fight boldly and spiritedly.

We are Young. We are Beautiful. We are Invincible.

We are Seventeen, and we're going to live Forever.

Part Two

The events of August tenth could have ended—and did, in my opinion—in tragedy. Do I mourn the loss of Peter Pettigrew? Yes. Did I hate him? Oh, most certainly. But as I hear, and, indeed, say his name, I call to mind, not the spy that whimpered at the Dark Lord's hem, but the boy I once called dear friend and confidante. Only in this way can my mind go at the moment, and whether or not I like it, I have found myself crying for the first Marauder to truly die: Wormtail. Dead now sixteen years, yet it was not until August tenth that the Otherworld finally rose up from its bounteous, dark mouth of a chasm and claim his body with its many haunting, beloved hands. Wormtail. _Our_ Wormtail. May you rest in peace; though I suspect you won't with Sirius raging at you for all eternity—he can't very well kill you again, can he?

I do not remember the morning of August eleventh very well. Harry and I returned to twelve Grimmauld Place near dawn, tired out of our minds and numbed through to our bone marrow from the night cold, from grief, and that horrible stench of death that lies beyond the capacity of human words and that pervades our existence so very meticulously. I remember it. The visage of rotting things, frozen things, an impression of burnt rubber and roasting plastic, screeches of wheels of unforgiving pavement, scorched hair, the smell of thinned, dusty earth robbed of its fertility, latex and formaldehyde at muggle funeral homes, sickly-sweet, goading lilies on every single fucking coffin in the world…

Why I want to surrender to that smell again is beyond my mind to decipher. It clung to me once, all those Halloweens ago, as my life leaked out of me and my heartbeat began to slow to a memorial tap. A truly delicious feeling, in all honesty. It was a perverse pleasure to watch those silky rivulets, like satin ribbons, run inexplicably down upon spotless white porcelain, like china dolls' faces, pretty shocks of bright rose lips upon pale countenances, glistening and inviting a kiss they shall never return—child corpses, unforgiving wide eyes which question without receiving answers, the penultimate of Keats's Grecian Urn, lips preparing to kiss, yet frozen forever more, suspended in time. I never told anyone why I survived that night. Not even Dumbledore, when he came to find me nursing my wounds a bit too calmly, a dreamy expression setting my face into a primeval mask. It is for the exact same reason that I lived on after August tenth, and after the death of Sirius. I am not, by far, the last Marauder.

Harry, as I remember, spent the morning wandering about after me like a placid pup, expressionless, his eyes, those incredibly lucid orbs that reflect the very soul of his mother, become dull and devoid of light. I could have wept for those eyes. It was for him that I mourned the most, that boy who trailed in my footfalls, my everlasting shadow, as though afraid to lose sight of me. I couldn't blame him—after all, some part of me, concealed deep under layers thick as volumes, dusty and knowledgeable as tomes, wanted very much to rip free of my mortal coil and take to mountain lakes and endless trees, where it belongs. It longs to be _free_; is that so inhuman after all? _I_ want to be free. Shame laughs, ridiculing, at me as I nurture these thoughts, even now—to cleave myself from my long-used corporeal shell, tear the skin to shreds and mock the face of civilization as I bite into Harry's flesh, give the beautiful little horror what it is he wants. Take him away with me, the darkest Bacchus abducting my loyal maenad, to hide in another land, behind the hoods of cloaks, our glittering eyes warning away those who would question our intimate, hedonistic cult of forest shadows lilting—running, running, running, once the moon rises, two spirits of the wilderness, whispers turned to rumors turned to tales turned to legends turned to myths, engraved in the impressionable tissue of time, free from pain and mortality and _this_. The Order. The Death Eaters. The Ministry. Grief. Memorials. Dumbledore. This.

They say all myths have some foundation in truth. The myth that werewolves are immortal creatures has a basis in fact, with one of those interminable "buts." A werewolf, given the best of circumstances, can technically live for hundreds, and even thousands, of years. The constant regeneration of our tissues can, in theory, prevent the aging process—leaving us to remain, timeless, in our primes, the place where cellular growth has completed. The sad truth of the matter is that we often kill ourselves; ripping our bodies apart during the arduous torment of transformations, turning, in hatred, on our own flesh, depleting our energy, depriving ourselves of the necessary hunt, and preventing the regenerative processes. We are creatures of slow suicide. In order to attain the energy needed for these restorative powers, we must hunt, we must kill, we must devour—or we are destroyed. That is, unless the Ministry should be so kind as to do it for us. I shudder as I think of the hundreds upon hundreds of pureblood head-hunters that stalk the haunted forests protected by the Ministry from Muggles, and the many creature-catching Aurors sent to keep us under control.

And what I wouldn't give to keep Harry as mine, young and beautiful forever, show him how much more life can be if one steps away from logic's doorstop, if only for a fleeting moment, and into the heartthrobs of savagery. But it is the knowledge of reality that stills my hand and my hunger—I could not condemn him to my Hell, however much better it would be made for me. I ignored his silent pleads on August eleventh as I always had, with more difficulty than ever. He smelled of death. I smelled of death. The wolf in me howled to be bathed in blood that smells of heady chocolate and peppermint, oranges and new grass that peaks through the drabbest ash.

The other members of the Order of the Phoenix finally appeared, avoiding our gazes, disturbed by us, filing into the kitchen. Molly did some more fussing over Harry and rushed back off for the emergency meeting being conducted, addressing the events and findings of our mission. I didn't care. All my senses could keep themselves keyed onto was Harry, his soul screaming pain, his eyes reflecting emptiness and hunger as they looked on me, skin scented of death clinging to him since he had emerged from the Veil, and long before. It is a surface armor; when I draw nearer, to his soft hair and shallow breath with could not reach his core, and dive under that exterior, I find warmth and love and sorrow and the life that makes me weep more than anything else in the world ever has—human misery and anguish, all the injustices of our world, the ghost of Marlow—the horror, the fucking horror of it all—where's the sense, the rivets, to hold it all together?

I looked at him, then, and found his demeanor pale as ice, dull-eyed, racked by nightmares and thoughts of the Veil—that damned veil—the source of all rage, cynicism, and disillusionment which crept up upon him like a African toxin along the Congo—invaded slowly but surely by the adult he is not.

It was then that I decided to take Harry home.

Shadow Wood has always been a place of darkness—I won't deny that. It was for this very reason that the Ministry made it into what it has been for a good two-hundred years. Their word for it is a "reserve"; mine is closer to "prison." But a peaceful prison, nevertheless, little-known and possessed of an unearthly silence. The small, mist-shrouded valley located vaguely in northern Scotland, where mysteries seem to grow as in a deep womb, a dime a dozen, where ghosts sit down in pubs for a bottle of scotch whiskey beside the patrons and leave a few shillings tip—has been home to Dark creatures and wizards and witches with Dark gifts for centuries—cursed-bloods, we have been called, the _shadows_, the _monsters_. We are the banshees on the moors which mourn deaths in a howling gale, the wolves that tear the sheep heads from their fluffy bodies, streaming the cockle shells and silver bells with blood, before disappearing into the netherworld from whence we came. Werewolves, vampires, banshees, hags, ghouls, zombies, trolls, ogres, the occasional giant, the cursed and un-afflicted half-breeds of these sorts, and countless permanently jinxed witches and wizards, have all found their home there. The trees whisper secrets and hunger for pure flesh untouched by Dark magic; dementors drift victimless among them. Werewolves, who have all but forgotten how to change back into humans, form packs and hunt the mountains for what game still wanders heedlessly into our midst. Our cemetery is the haunt of the ghosts of tortured souls, many of whom passed from one existence to the other seamlessly, merely rising from bed for another day, leaving their stiff envelopment of transience twisted among the sheets in eternal sleep. At night, the vampires light bonfires to rekindle their souls and the banshees sing eldritch songs which send icy shards throughout the spine, mournfully in tune with faraway baying, the cult of the moon. I could think of no better home, and no crueler prison—a constant reminder of what I am at my very center, and each desire which pulls at me throughout my life. And I am always pulled back to it.

The Ministry instructs most registered cursed-bloods to reside in Shadow Wood, and, in accordance with their records and the individual's potential danger to un-afflicted, are either allowed to leave at intervals or instructed to stay at all times. I was lucky enough to have had Dumbledore's protection for a good portion of my life, come from a respectable enough family, joined the war against Lord Voldemort, and have never yet bitten anybody. I can leave freely and have fewer eyes watching my movements; I begin to think the Ministry really doesn't give a damn about what I do, so long as I keep to the shadows, in my place. It is my "job" to take care of the residents, keep an eye on their movements, and keep uprising and discontent at bay. I'd do anything for a bit of discontent—I'm rather discontent myself. Moreover, I am _a_ discontent—inwardly, I eternally find fault, and as my self-opinion moves toward the negative, it's the opinion of others which retains my sanity. I'm shamefully weak: a pack animal, a herd-beast, a remorseless stampede who is but one portion of a thousand, a percentage, a thin slice of strawberry pie. Most importantly, I am not a leader. I do not lead my own life—rather, the dictates of layered reserve, society, nucleotide bonds in DNA, rivulets of curse magic lacing the blood stream like poisoned wine glasses with pink sherry; wolfdom is sweet, but short-lived.

Hell. To whom I'd sell my soul to take him with me.

I'm a scholar at heart, and my little house there tells the tale. A kitchen, a main room, a bath, magically-heated well water; books lining the walls. It is a hermit's domain, tried-and-true, a whisper of the picturesque. Keats himself could have walked into my pantry, held out his arms: "Ode to a Well-Prepared Hermit!" A storm could hit outside the windows—indeed, in my hut I wouldn't notice. Cramped, claustrophobic, dusty, smelling of old things and powdery moths, mushrooms under dead trees, wet and impotent boards—the smell of wasted effort, a wasted mind, and a wasted life. Fermented semen unreleased, nutritious blood trickling down a drain bright red and oxidized, mother's milk and a severed fetus, the sun between snowstorms, the black slime innards of a stag spread upon the grass in the hot sun after a kill.

"Professor, this place is fantastic!" Harry's voice intruded; we are far apart enough in age that I wasn't agitated by the difference in our personal outlooks. He doesn't realize that, after Hogwarts, it might very well be his prison too—with a feeling of satisfaction that comes with age, with ever-substantiated, irritating _knowing_ that follows adults around like our shadows on the very ground, I let him have his delusions, and smiled to myself at his naiveté. I remember what was to be young, impressed easily, hand over my respect to the worst of places—and oh, yes, he respects me. _Professor Lupin_. I feel a twisted smile even now. He doesn't know who I was: the defiant glint in my eye when I discovered my creator had made me on bloody _purpose_, when I knew I'd been made to suffer as someone else's lackey, a tool of revenge exercised on some petty foolhardy thing my father had done; the way I glanced ever-so-innocently at girl's forms hidden by their billowing robes, my mind filled with a thousand imaginings; my dark broodings, moments in the boy's toilets in the showers when I'd sat, empty-eyed with boiling water pounding down on my skull and shoulders, feeling that lascivious orb outside the window pulse and rage at me like a coming storm, mother's arms that caress before they plunge her child beneath the water and _hold_.

No. I'm noble, caring, kind-hearted; simply and cleanly—Professor Lupin.

"It is, isn't it?" I said in my scholar's voice. "I don't often come back here—no more than I need, anyways, to see to things. It's rather lonely, and I can't do much for the Order; Voldemort doesn't come near here. The cursed here are beyond the Dark Arts. They're bored. They're just… ghosts. Not even dangerous; they just exist."

"Why're _you_ here, then?" he asked, still insistent on my incumbent normality. "You fight—you've got the Order."

I strode toward a bookshelf; there are things he'll learn in time; and the things I wanted him to know, there and then, while we stayed in Shadow Wood, in a suspended moment, an eye in the storm against Voldemort. Before he comes to know me as a man, before we have to face each other as equals, as fellows, as two men and two creatures and two colleagues, before he forgets this boy-self of his that asks questions, I felt determined to give him Moony: the teenaged me that is fast-dying under the onslaught of Greyback, the werewolves, the Dark Lord, Harry's eyes gaining a wisdom I fear to see…

"I have demons of my own to face, as I'm sure you've seen in our Occlumency lessons. Being here helps." I took down a couple choices—classics, in fact—one British, and one American. "Fancy reading any more fiction before diving back into your D.A. work?"

Harry smiled. "More Irving?" he asked; I privately thought to myself that if you've read one Irving, in some essential fashion you've read them all.

"No—a little less recent, I think."

I handed the two thin paperbacks to him—_Lord of the Flies_ and _A Separate Peace_.

"I hope you don't mind the couch," I said, smiling. My own bed actually folds out of the wardrobe in typical bachelor fashion—as I said, close quarters. He shook his head, and I promptly showed him around the little place, and sat us down for something to eat. A suspended time indeed, as we sat across from each other in the candle and firelight at the small wooden table, our eyes wandering eagerly over words, over musty, often-forgotten pages, dimply-appreciated places; my eyes wandering to him, looking for the questions I knew him to have; the sharp spike in his endorphins as he felt the surge of epiphany, the down-sweep of disappointment like the drop of the stomach in a quick fall or a missed stair in the dark, a trickle of musical sadness almost indefinable among waves of intricacies, thoughts and doubts, rhetorical questions. His heartbeat would quicken—I knew Ralph was struggling with Jack, knew their tribes were separating, knew Ralph was wondering what had gone wrong, and soon Simon would be brutally murdered because of it, knew the Lord of the Flies would be cackling atop his putrid stick, his voice gurgling, spitting up from Phlegethon, laughing that unendurable laugh… Often in my mind he has gray whiskers and pointed, bloodied teeth… in Harry's, I wondered if perhaps he had cat's slit red eyes and a snake's nose…

"Professor—"he began, as I quite knew he would—"they couldn't really mistake Simon for the monster, could they? That's just… stupid."

"Paranoia and fear can do that, Harry," I responded, feeling at ease, leading him toward answers that were hovering just there above his grasp. I suppose—no matter how frustrating and ill-rewarding it can be—that's the true responsibility of adults. If we don't have those answers ourselves by a certain age… what then? More rhetorical questions.

"But Simon and Ralph and Jack—they were all just like best friends, weren't they? Wouldn't they stick together on an island like that, with some great monster after them?"

I smiled, somewhat indulgent. "Try not to think of them as entirely round and realistic characters—Golding writes them out to represent ideas."

He did not appear satisfied. "That doesn't mean it's okay for them to act crazy."

I felt a stab of sadness; Harry does not yet know war; when I spoke of the dangers involved in the Order, I was not referring to death—it's what war does to your soul, to the way you perceive those around you—the breaking of your trust, the inability to discern shadows from objective reality, the turning of friends to enemies in every corner—the depths into which you would dive to get what you think you _need_ to survive, and to hell with everything else.

"Well, Harry… war makes us act crazy."

He blinked, another question behind his eyes—I blew out the candle. In the firelight, I glimpsed tendrils of smoke curling around one another tantalizingly, daring the other to come close enough to merge, in a dance up to the ceiling, curling like snakes of fog, material sound. Sulfur and gun powder, a child lying dead while playing ball—educate them to protect themselves. Wasted effort.


	2. The stony cold of lonesome

Author's Note: Thanks always to the people who reviewed Part One when I had it up, and I'm really, really sorry for the delay in this sequel. And also, another thank you to Amity (I just knew that was you, I saw you on the favorites list of _I know the Truth Now_, and your profile just fit perfect with the way you articulate), whose feedback goes aboe and beyond helpful into extraordinary. I hope you enjoy.

More In French

English possesses a single, all-encompassing verb concerning knowledge for everyday usage—in its infinitive form, it is _to know_. French, however, acknowledges that there are two distinct ways of knowing, based upon what it is that is being known. The first verb in its infinitive is _savoir_: to know a fact. For example, savoir would be used in the case of _knowing_ that two times two is always four in base-ten mathematics. Things we know with savoir are irrefutable, provable trivia—they are not subjective. It is folly to use savoir when we describe our knowledge of another human being.

Part Three 

_Tick-tock_.

It's rather amazing to watch even the most war-wearied of men deal with the miracle of birth for the first time. For James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, all of whom were twenty-one, trapped in a bland room together with only the infuriating _tick-tock_ of the wooden wall clock to assuage their (and particularly James's) incalculable fears, it was torture—and, for the Healer who sometimes poked a head in with news of progress for the panicking father-to-be, it was downright hilarity.

James Potter had not sat down once during the twelve hour, fourteen minute, and twenty-seven second labor. He was nearly as haggard as Remus after a full moon, which indeed it was, robes drifting over his pajamas which he hadn't bothered to change out of when Lily's water had broken the night before—it was a thankful thing Sirius had been sleeping on the couch that night so assure his even wearing shoes. Up and down the room he traveled, pacing from one end to another, an animal in a cage, sometimes mumbling to himself; outside the dawn was rosy and pearlescent, the last day of July. He'd been praying, in whispers that somehow sounded sacred, that Harry would be a day late. Or that he might receive a Lizzy instead—anything to beat the prophesy. His blood boiled with shame at the thought. It shouldn't matter, when his child was born, or whether it was a boy or girl. But it did.

The other Marauders had never seen their best friend like this before; he smelled of cold dampness, sheets stained by sweat spiked with alcohol, the floor was off-kilter, the world was wrong. He smelled of fear. The grass had been poisoned with valerian, lemon tea musty in the dark; he had a secret. The Marauders didn't have secrets—it's what made them special at Hogwarts and in the Order. They were a world within worlds, a group that could not be divided down again into separate parts—an atom. Electrons spinning agitatedly, happily, irrevocably, around a nucleus, bonded together by forces they did not know or understand.

Remus watched James attentively, himself in a chair, deep shadows under his eyes, already feeling ten years older, a great deep gash across his face from his and Sirius's last run-in with Death Eaters. The full moon had come and gone like clockwork, a few days ago. Still, despite the panic of the Lily's labor, the scramble to St. Mungo's, he was the only one who had begun to calm down and grow content, far too tired to pace with James's voracity. Light tinted the windows—the sun gave its hints, shining somewhere just over the next horizon. It knew. Someone was coming into the world; how could not every person be awake right now, anticipating? Their waiting seemed to fill up the universe.

They were an atom—and a neutron was being introduced. One neutron, named _fear_, and they absorbed it, slightly heavier, slightly burdened, but stable.

_Tick-tock_.

Sirius stood again, going for what must have been his twentieth cup of tea. His hand was shaking as he pounded James's shoulder as he passed, the ghost of his rakish, doggish grin flitting about his handsome face. The caffeine was getting to him—the whole room must have heard his heart beat sounding out something like the Chicken Dance. The very thought of Sirius's ventricles suddenly flapping like hen wings made Remus smile unabatedly. He felt a fool—James was obviously suffering, the four of them hadn't spoken in hours, Peter looked positively green in the face, and Sirius appeared as though, despite his insanely loyal disposition towards James, this childbirth dilemma might send him screaming from the room any second toward his motorbike, bachelor flat, and records.

"I hate this," Sirius said abruptly as he sat down with his tea, sipping it obsessively, eyes bloodshot, his foot tapping (Remus again thought of the Chicken Dance, and wondered if he were going slightly insane). "At least Death Eaters wouldn't toy with us for twelve hours—they'd've gotten the whole messy thing out of the way a lot sooner. The waiting's murder…"

Remus smiled. "Men have been waiting for women to give birth since… well, the dawn of man. I'm sure we can manage."

James had begun to breathe rapidly in and out of his mouth. "What if… what if she's in danger? What if there's something they haven't thought about? What if the baby's stillborn, or… or _he_ shows up…"

Sirius grabbed a paper bag, near at hand from an episode similar to this one only a few hours previous. "Prongs, mate, you're hyperventilating…"

The breathing grew worse; James's eyes flashed. "I'm _not_ hyperventilating!" Part of this, however, was spoken from inside the bag, as Sirius had shoved it over his face.

"Breathe in and out slowly, you great git," Sirius said threateningly, though he sounded as though he might laugh. "Lily's the one giving birth, not you. And you!" he said, whirling on Remus. "No more history lessons, Moony. Just because men've been trapped in waiting rooms for ages doesn't make it any easier on the four of us, now does it?"

Remus just smiled; after bringing himself under control, James took the bag off his face.

"I'm sorry… I don't mean to panic… I've never been so… in my _life_… when she said she was having contractions, and right after the Prewetts, too, with Death Eaters everywhere… It's like I've been stretched out like a rubber band… I've _never_ been so… so…"

"Bloody scared?" Sirius finished for him, grinning wryly as he ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah… especially with Lily screaming and threatening us the whole way…"

"Well, if you two hadn't _panicked_," Remus reminded, filling in for Lily's absent voice.

"Shut up, Moony," James and Sirius said at the same time; Remus snickered softly.

At long last, the door opened; Peter didn't make it any further, though—the moment the click sounded throughout the waiting room, he was on his feet, the shade of wintergreen toothpaste, dashing for the nearest bathroom, hands over his mouth.

"Can't say I wasn't waiting for that," Sirius said, looking after him; James ran toward the Healer who came in, his face a mixture of mingled panicked delirium and eagerness.

"What—Lily—okay?"

Something wonderfully sharp came up off his skin—part of him, and part of Remus and Sirius, already knew the answer from her face—it peaked in the center of their stomachs, fluttered against their ribcages. The light outside was persistent, red, yellow and gold, tangerine orange, the image through melting caramel. For a moment they forgot fear again, forgot it as though they had never even heard the word.

"You have a perfectly healthy son, Mr. Potter, and your wife is just fine—though she's already telling us she's ready to get out of bed, and I'm afraid some of the Healers are rather amazed…" The old Healer beamed, unable to restrain it. "She instructed his name is to be—"

"Harry," James said, his face suddenly blank, wavering on his feet. "I have a… I have a son…"

"Get the bag, Padfoot," Remus said, now on his feet and grasping James's shoulders, a wide grin on his face.

"Forget the bag," Sirius said, chuckling. "He's gonna pass out."

James blinked and shook them off, squaring his shoulders. "No taking the mickey out of me today, you two. I'm a father now."

Sirius and Remus roared. A balloon was swelling in the room—it made them suddenly breathless, lifting up off the ground—indeed it _must_ consume the world—James's eyes glowed, and there was triumph there, burning bright and eternal, no power could extinguish it—and they were there with him at its center, transported with the smells of newly-hewn grass, with strong lemon tea and soothing steam, with morning dew drops—meeting on the pitch early on Saturdays when they'd been seventeen melded suddenly with James at his desk, the tousle of his hair after coming victorious out of battle with a dementor, the toss of his head and the twinkle in his hazel eyes: _Everything's gonna be just fine_.

Without knowing it, the men had fallen into reverent silence.

The Healer smiled. "You'll be able to see both of them shortly, Mr. Potter, and congratulations." Something sad lingered in her eyes. "It's good to see some life and some love and laughter in times like these."

She left; the silence deepened.

_Tick-tock_.

They were an atom, and another neutron intruded upon their nucleus, named _reality_. And somewhere in the great, vast space between worlds, lay neutrons traveling at vast speeds: _sorrow_, and _loss_, and _suspicion_, and _survival_. Instinct knows of these neutrons and braces for the impact, but the mind refuses to understand until it's far too late.

Boom; worlds can end with a neutron.

Part Four

_I look in the mirror, see your face_

_If I look deep enough_

_So many things inside that are dressed like you_

_Are taking over…_

Perhaps I should explain, as I sit here now beside the hearth, why it is that I love the smell of chocolate. It's a story, in part, that I'll tell anyone. Chocolate is the natural remedy for a dementor attack, because nearly every human being associates the taste and the texture, its very melt, the difference between the warm sweet on the tip of your tongue and the smoothness of a small flat slab on the back, with childhood, and with happiness. It's a constant of the human condition—a part of a collective unconscious. We all try chocolate at different points in our life and in different ways, and we don't all remember when, and certainly some people are even slightly allergic, or their Uncle Martin vomited chocolate over their front when they were seven, or they dreamed when they were five that chocolate bees were chasing them until they dove into a creek of marshmallow—and certainly none of these things can be good. And still, chocolate cures dementor attacks of a mild nature for everybody. There are private connotations and meanings, and there are communal ones.

Shortly before going to Hogwarts, I had an unfortunate run-in with a dementor looking for a mate; and I assure you, if you think dementors are terrifying in their normal state, imagine them _breeding_. In any case, I'm half-Muggle and I happened to have a Mars Bar and the happened-by partial knowledge from overhearing my father that chocolate _saves one_ from dementor attacks—as the great floating horror came at me, I held the chocolate out in front of me like a talisman. I believed so strongly that the thing would protect me that I wasn't at all surprised when the shrieking, in-heat shadow whirled and floated off in another direction. Looking back, I laugh at how ridiculous I must have been, holding out my magic Mars Bar as though it were the Holy Grail or the Spear of Longinus, when I know now that dementors looking for mates are often confused, easily frightened or disoriented, unable to attack. Still, sometimes when I lie awake and alone, longing for the sound of someone else's breathing swelling in the dark, I remember my talisman, I remember how good that Mars Bar tasted because in the silky richness of milk and sugar, the tang of salt, that indefinable childhood glory, I sensed victory, and I believed it, too, with all my heart. I hadn't been victorious over the werewolf—but nothing got my soul.

It is not ironic at all, then, that Harry smells of chocolate.

I told him this story, just here beside the hearth, one night after dinner, before our discussions reopened on the subject of Golding—omitting moral, of course, because that's his to work out.

Harry thought for a moment, fire flickering as it reflected off his glasses—I could smell the scent of the outside grass and the dust from inside lifting off his jean leg as the flames heated him—from his skin, the scent of electricity: his cells buzzed with static whirring in busy electron chains, undergoing quick-paced mitosis, accelerating cell growth to make his limbs extend, and the counter-current of heat generated in the processes, the cooling efforts made rapidly by sebaceous and sweat glands releasing metamorphosing pheromones, the tawny scent of proteins and the natural, fatty and soapy scent of steroids and lipids supplied to his muscles almost snapped my senses—teenagers have too many hormones. Somehow, though, when I dulled my focus and let the wave pass over me, it always came together, unmistakably chocolate, and just below it the sunny smell of orange, and sharp, fresh smell of peppermint so tangible I could taste the humbug rolling about in my mouth.

"That's kinda scary,' Harry mused. " I never really thought about dementors breeding. I mean, first off, what would you call a baby dementor? And do mother dementors have to take them around and teach them how to suck the happiness out of people like lionesses have to teach the cubs to hunt? And are they like black widows, because I sure can't see a dementor mating for life, that'd be kinda weird…"

He'd stopped being so self-conscious; by this time he had me laughing outright. One more reason to love my story about chocolate, I suppose—or to love chocolate itself. It felt good to smile as I do with him, but I, of course, know that he will not always be this way—that his eyes will dull forever, that he'll grow jaded and bitter and cynical, that the death will stick in his pores and scrubbing him with new grass will stop working, that the taste of chocolate will stop bringing up memories. I wanted to ask him when he'd first tasted chocolate—it seems an important thing to know about someone.

"I noticed you'd started _A Separate Peace_, so I assume you're ready to talk about your conclusions on _Lord of the Flies_, Harry?"

He looked exasperated, though not with me; he seemed to plead with the fire for help. "Conclusions? There _are_ no conclusions for something like that."

I cocked my head; Harry has seen death, he knows very well there are conclusions. There are no second chances—there is only the ever-moving bullet train to Hell, the pull to death, the world's obsession with coming to room temperature, with the fight against the fire which consumes us in the greatest glory before burning out. Nothing rekindles it. It must be kept burning, small and guarded, at the center of a great galaxy of darkness: a candle in an abandoned house wrecked and haunted not by ghosts but by laughter.

"Really? What makes you say that?" My scholar's voice again.

"Ralph got away from the island, but that doesn't erase the fact that Piggy's dead and Jack betrayed him and they all turned against him and _hunted_ him… Just because they're going back to civilization again doesn't undo everything that happened. They'll probably have to stay together, right? Who's to say they won't still try to kill him?"

"Why would they want to do that?" I asked, resisting the urge to smile.

"Well…" Harry paused, seeming to weigh what he was about to say. "You can take the boy out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the boy."

I sensed an edge to his words and in the keen way he allowed his gaze to linger in my eyes, reversing us for a moment—just then, it was he who irritatingly knew all and refused to tell, causing my heart to pause before adrenaline surged out, egged on energetically by a very pleased wolf down in my chest, pumping heat behind my eyes and fingertips; in my ears was a womb-like warm rushing sound, blood pumping through my brain tissues, a static sweep, crackling hairs. I swallowed, clammy sweat on my temple, coldness at the base of my spine and creeping upward, the rushing slowed—Harry continued to watch me, knowing full-well the power he'd held in that second, flirting with an idea. He'd acted as a moon, as a howl, as a high-frequency pitch, as the overpowering scent of a kill; he'd been inducing me to transform, standing as a light through shattered church windows, a broken gold cross, shafts of light which can be felt but never held, a truth sensed but not known, lingering at the edge of my lips, bliss punctuated by pain unimaginable, flight with a broken wing, a run through lonely forests. There is an ever-present gap between conception and action—between what should and what can be—between a move just not taken and surrender to a dream—between waiting and understanding; and it seems you've been existing your whole life just to comprehend that one truth though you've never been aware of it, and you wonder how in hell you were ever happy before, a wolf's howl transmutes seamlessly… _Hallelujah_…

I took a breath: chocolate.

Green eyes and flames, a warm hearth, skin like pearls—the scent of grass and citrus—these things in my present world longing to mold to one of the past, a place dimming; I see there in my mind's eye the ghost images of Lily and James dancing at their wedding, eternal behind a haze of time, yet how I feel time I do not know, except in the vision of that music box couple, twirling about to tinkling, unreal music which slows, slows… slows… until I wind it up again, but there's the protestation of the gears, the quiet creak, a world of dust moats and shafts of light on fading photos, and no way to recapture it or freshen it but with laughter as I remember my stupidity, the sting of embarrassments, joking reminders, ever the past reformulated, re-imprinted on the present in odd strings of clinging connection. I have traveled a thousand miles since then, without moving very far at all.

"You're supposing too much," I said, trying to correct him. "Remember: think of them as symbols. What does Ralph represent on that island."

Harry thought. "Well, he's certainly the only sane one in the end." I raised an eyebrow to prompt him further. "I'd say leadership, but he'd make a better leader somewhere where people actually _want_ to be diplomatic and sensible." He blinked as I cleared my throat. "Good sense?"

I smiled. "And Jack?"

Harry thought; he knows characters like Jack. "Not evil, I'll keep that one for Roger. I'd say fear and savagery, he's pretty loony."

I nodded. "Cheers, Harry. You see the conflict? They're both educated in the same fashion, but when faced with the exact same dangers on the same island, Jack and Ralph have entirely different views on how to do things but the same basic motivations."

"Safety," Harry said, something clicking behind his eyes. "They waged war against each other, because they couldn't agree. The monster was different for both of them."

_To say the least_.

He continued, now gazing into the fire, some odd excitement trickling toward me, pushing outward in the air around him. "They were just afraid—it made Jack crazy when he was out in the forest by himself—he wanted the others with him, he couldn't get Ralph to understand what it was he felt out there, and Ralph was scared of foregtting civilization and everyone losing their better judgment and they just… collided."

"Precisely," I said in my scholar's voice; at the base of my neck, however, was a faint disruption, a feeling of unease. Collision is something I understand.

_Thump_.

In the darkness that night I heard it—the sound of a final heartbeat—I slipped into wakefulness expecting to see Peter's face again disappearing behind the Veil, falling forever Sirius, fear and a dauntless grin respectively, both realizing the burn of mortality. A spark and extinguish.

What I saw instead, with bleary night vision, was Harry's wild head pop up beside the couch, gazing around confusedly. He'd fallen off, and the floor had most likely not been particularly kind.

"Professor Lupin? Are you alright?" he asked, lacking my ability to see in the near-perfect dark; a note of panic lay in his voice, and I sat up directly, alarm flooding me. I seldom hear him scared—as it did with James, Harry's fear unnerves me and throws the world off-balance; I could smell it, the chemical bite of salt and ammonia—cold sweat, and it glistened in the starlight flooding the window, though he could barely see it, a sheen of white. He was ghostly pale—his eyes had grown wide, the waxing moon revealed an otherworld green tinged with blue, something seen in dead things under the water's surface, a mist of spider webs. Harry's head fell; a strange, hissing sound escaped him, mutterings in Parseltongue, and I purposefully carried myself, faster than I thought possible after just waking up, to a kneeling position beside him.

"Harry—it's okay, Harry, I'm right here, I haven't gone anywhere, everything's alright."

He shook his head violently, a manic gleam in his eye. "No—someone was after you, someone was trying to kill you, the snake knew where you were—"

A stab went through me at the panic in his voice, the way his stare looked but didn't _see_ at all what was in front of him—I was a ghost, he could _not_ let me be a ghost and then disappear from my grasp, _that _I wouldn't allow. I shook him by the shoulders.

"Harry, this is exactly what happened to Sirius, you're letting your fear of losing someone cloud your better—" I stopped short, realizing I hadn't quite said what I'd meant to say… and realizing I wasn't sure what exactly I _meant_ to say, either. Where had the fear been, and when?

It never occurred to me before, all these years having gone by, that Sirius had been afraid during the first war. He seemed incapable and yet… Peter once thought the same of all of us: James, Sirius, Lily, myself. And while he often hid it well, James was terrified of losing us, and of losing his family—and I know I couldn't bear the thought of losing them either. Even after his death, it's still easy for Harry and I to believe he'll simply come up the walk someday, shaking his hair out of his eyes, triumphant again. I suppose that's the Marauders' real triumph—even after death, they remain immortal, seventeen, almost palpable, just on the edge of your sight and your touch, lingering in the shadows yet still wholly powerful. Light that cannot be grasped.

I had his attention, though. "You… you _do_ think I killed him, don't you?" he asked, sounding suddenly perceptive.

I looked away, avoiding the question—how to explain to Harry that _he_ didn't kill Sirius—that the beast of war did: the Lord of the Flies, the demon on a stick that laughs and laughs at our boundless stupidity and arrogance, the hungry mass of putrid flesh and maggots, the endless wall of names, the unquenchable thirst, the unassailable fortress, the bottomless, boundless void, the hill upon hill upon fucking, fucking hill of markers. Bottomless, no echo. The demon of worthless fear and wasted, paranoid effort in late-night hours, working away toward death.

"Harry, are you afraid?" I asked, unaware I'd taken his arm, longing to be reassured as I sought to reassure him. My voice sounded stronger than I felt.

I heard him take a breath in the dark, the rush of hair as it moved in on a base curve toward him, creating a slight intake, and the expanding as he let it out.

"No… no, it's just a nightmare… You're here, it's not real."

_Good boy_.

These fifteen years, I have been close to nobody—I have shunned human contact as they've shunned me, and shunned wolves with equal disdain. The feeling of another heartbeat so close against mine has grown foreign and distant, a whisper from another time. I have lived dormant, inhuman but not savage—it is the belief of many African tribes that one's humanity is defined by belonging, by the nearness of others, and not by individuality or knowledge. I wanted to wrap him up in myself, to fight off the deep, empty dark with beating wings, to nurture a spark selfishly in the center of spatial wilderness. But I hadn't the courage—I hadn't the words—I hadn't the ability to communicate a feeling so deeply inlaid in what it is to be myself and to be the wolf and to be Remus Lupin and Professor Lupin and Moony and _to be a man_—

And in the dark he surprised me, my ghost and shadow and pup and sparkling eyes in firelight, in the center of the wilderness, in that gap between what _is_ and what _should be_, creeping in under the walls to beneath the blankets, and I surprised myself as I wrapped an arm around him, as a pocket of warmth formed between us, as a tendril of some memory—some impression of light off water and sunset streams and warm rock and the scent of mud and milk and lemon tea and violets—set in, and yet still it all combined back together into one consuming, wondrous scent.

Chocolate is a wonderful cure for fear.


	3. A bell tolls for my heart

Author's Notes: There are quotes here from J.K. Rowling, _The Prisoner of Azkaban_, at the end of section six. You'll know them when you see them. I apologize, as usual, especially to Amity, for my terrible delays. I just recently got into UC Berkeley and UCLA (yay!) and paperwork is a nightmare, not to mention the choosing. I hope you enjoy—I'm particularly proud of this section.

Part Five

_Thump, thump. Thump, thump._

They did not know—had no way of knowing—that this would be the last time they would run together, listen together, be themselves in their purest form—simply _be_—together. After four years away, only returning for urgent meetings with Dumbledore, the Marauders, _sans_ Wormtail, who'd had something urgent to take care of after they'd spoken in the bright interior of the Headmaster's office, had taken to the Forbidden Forest; they'd snuck around Hagrid's cabin on silent feet as in younger days.

Twenty-one is an ambiguous age. Though James had wed, though they'd danced at his reception with numerous bottles of scotch between them, though they'd gotten jobs, entered internships, gone to university, though they'd tossed back their heads in glorious defiance in the face of Death Eaters and narrowly escaped with their young, lithe lives, they had not long left boyhood. In fact, had not a child entered into their delicate sphere, they would have continued, the youngest members of the Order and some of its most daring, most triumphant, most alive, embodying all the ideals it stood to protect:

Freedom. Light. Companionship. Camaraderie. Triumph. Life. Love.

No longer students in uniform, laughing in heedless abandon, shucking responsibility like a husk—now teacher's aides, soldiers, fighters, husbands, lovers, fathers.

_Thump, thump._

Their hearts whispered together with the beat of the recent, shaking memory, reverberating through their lives forever. A neutron, Dumbledore's words. Wormtail's absence itself sent an ominous shiver through them, this once-collective, unshakable unit, a dragon of loss.

_Remus bent over the sink; his eyes glassed over, as he lost himself in a small, drifting flight, lilted by a steady sound—drip, drip—drip, drip—the sound of his heart, drip-dripping out onto the lovely, white porcelain, creating swirling, half-smoke and half-dreamscape patterns in miniscule puddles of clear, cool water. Hot met cold, all turned to room temperature. He was melting back into that pure, last and first, indelible state, the atom that can be reduced no further. This was the truth of the wolf, and the boy, the pack mate, the Marauder._

_Only that blossoming, blood red piece of him, stained and tainted with the smell of rotting lilies, harbingers from beyond the Veil, fingers of asphodel, the piece who dared to _become a man_, knew the truth._

_Atoms can be split. Worlds can end. Matter and energy, love and friends and light and life, effort and relationships, closeness and connaître, can be destroyed, with nothing more than a breath from the future, howling through tunnels of silver smoke._

August now. Just on the verge of notice, the world had begun again to descend into snow and long nights. It would be a deep dark winter; Dumbledore's weary, wrinkled face reminded these so nearly once-boys as they treaded into his office, James in the front.

"Ah, Remus, there you are—feeling well, I hope? Good, excellent. And Sirius, you're looking as dashing as ever, one would never think you were almost decapitated by Mr. Mulciber last Sunday. Hello, Peter, hello. Yes, do take some Ice Mice, that's what they're there for. Tea, anyone? Ah, Remus, Sirius, and of course sugar for you both, you never change."

Dumbledore then nodded, somewhat gravely, at James in the way of a pleasantry, and it was quite plain, once the door had closed to, that they would not be sharing tea and comments on the weather. Remus, Peter, and Sirius sat down. James and Dumbledore remained standing, the former with his hands clasped behind his back. He had never appeared before them so serious—not even at his wedding ceremony—and for once, his body truly could not tell them that once-truth, now an everlasting lie: _Everything's gonna be alright_.

"Now, James has brought you here," Dumbledore said, with sober energy, "because he had a son on the 31st of July this year, as did Frank and Alice Longbottom, and there is now serious cause for each of you to know why the birth of these boys is significant—as well as a significant danger to us all."

Peter stopped eating directly; his eyes turned eager, shocked, as though he could not believe any of this was being uttered in his so insignificant presence. Remus leaned his elbow against the armrest, cocked his head, held his chin in hand thoughtfully, remained silent. Sirius leaned forward.

"A danger? James's just had a boy, we ought to be thrilled, not calculating threats against the Order. What does Voldemort care about an infant?"

"Quite a bit, actually," James whispered, his voice strong in the office interior, yet somehow sad.

Dumbledore nodded toward the silver Pensieve in the center of his desk, its swirling, gaseous contents molding slowly, mesmerizing, into a shape with large eyes and a harsh, demonic voice.

_Crash_. Sibyl Trelawney disappeared in a whisper of indefinite smoke, vaguer than the premonition that passed her phantom lips—but even before she concluded her dark prophesy, the tea cups had dropped from both Sirius's and Remus's numbed hands to the floor.

James closed his eyes. The pain that lie there glinted, brighter than any the Cruciatus could ever inflict.

_Remus squeezed his eyelids shut, securing his mind from the lonely sight of those singular droplets. Could he not create a vat of their blood?—Lily, James, Peter—Sirius, once Remus had had his rightful revenge—dig a mass grave, throw himself in, lose his own swirling, confused, screaming individual mind shorn off from all the love in that great, lonely world of unfamiliar faces, of lonely, soundless nights—an eternity of nights before him on winged paws, searching for more who loved as he loved, in a flurry of paws and fur and blood and memory and electricity, scent and color and the music of hearts._

_A door opened somewhere, so far away, outside the invisible walls of the roaring in his ears, the last, trickle in the well desire to die and slip away, the sound of Dumbledore's footsteps. So, Remus Lupin and the wolf would live, after all._

_Thump, thump. Thump, thump._

Adults now, they ran for what they could never know was the last time. And still they were breaths of air, of eternity, of lives transcending human limitations, extending past the molecules of air and skin between them, becoming one another in the harmony of footsteps, breath, heartbeats, the reverberation of a howl, violets and lemon tea and pine trees, leaking sap and ginger and new grass, earth, dark chocolate, old books, the flashes and touches, the vision of a smile in a dormitory, laughter and shouts and calls of panic, coming fresh from adventure and danger, blazing, afire, smoking in triumph—daring Fate and Death _just for one more day_—

"_All right, I'm bloody bad at toasts, so somebody come up with something!"_

_Remus and James doubled over laughing while Peter giggled behind his cup; the wedding party was for the most part smashed and dancing wildly. The Marauders themselves, plus Lily (who'd already fallen out of the running) had descended into a drinking competition. _

"_Wait, mates, now I've got one. To honor—get on 'er"—_

"_NO!" James and Remus cried in unison, still laughing. Remus lifted his glass._

"_Okay, here's one. To… er…"_

"_Wisdom, books, and good English Algebra, right Moony? I swear, you couldn't even be a vicar"—_

"_Shut your hole, Sirius," James laughed, and tipped his glass at Remus as a sign to continue._

"_Well… how about to James making all the mistakes in marriage, so the rest of us can stay bachelors our whole lives and spoil his kids rotten?"_

"_All right, that's a bloody good one," Sirius chuckled and clinked, smiling rakishly. "Exactly what I intend to do, eh, Moony?"_

_James clapped Remus rather hard on the back. "I don't believe you for a second, Moony," he said, rather soberly. "I think you'll make a great dad, someday."_

_Peter appeared wary; Sirius paused half-way through his glass; James, in his still-drunken stupor, realized slowly the folly of his words._

"_Oh—Remus, I'm sorry—I'm not—you know—cone sold sober…"_

_Remus smiled a small, resigned grin, and downed his glass. "Don't worry, Prongs. I'll get my revenge when I've got your kids in my hands. Send them off to the Big Bad Wolf, see if they come home without pounds of chocolate in their pockets to make your life hell."_

_James paused, then finally laughed. "I love you, mate—I've never known any Big Bad Wolf who could pound down four glasses of scotch and a pound of chocolate besides and still dance—think you could handle a fifth?"_

"_Well, it is a wedding, and nobody's pushed that open bar for what it's worth," Sirius answered for Remus, whose smile had turned warmer. "Shall we, gentlemen?"_

They ran for what they could never know was the last time—because, after all, Marauders are immortal. Marauders do not know death, decay, age, sadness, or fear; only glory, triumph, a flash of heartbeats and eyes in the forest of ages, are there. Marauders are soulless, ageless, living at the core of those shadows always seen at the edge of the sight in the Devil's hours and at the last breath of sunset. A final aria, the last howl on the last day, somewhere in the distance.

_We are Marauders, and we're going to live Forever._

Part Six

_You don't remember me but I remember you_

_I lie awake and try so hard not to think of you—_

_But who can decide what they dream?_

_And dream I do._

I did not sleep that night for a very, very long time. As the seconds lengthened, I attuned the sounds of the clock to his breathing—in, out, tick, tock—sitting and not moving, hardly daring to breathe, as though the spider's web might be disturbed with an intake of air. At this point I choose not to think of what others would say or believe about my actions, or try to justify them, because I know my own thoughts, and frankly I've ceased to care. The breathing and the clock continued; I remember slipping in and out of conscious thoughts, drifting occasionally into the illogical which precedes dreaming. He was warm, an arm draped over my chest in the carelessness of sleep, forehead in the crook of my neck—my mind wandered often to every poem and song and requiem of loss I've ever happened upon, and I wasn't sure why. All I could do was gently stroke his warm back and listen to those gentle, wonderful, living sounds—so unlike the death-rattling rustle of leaves out of doors, the cold, long-dead light of stars—though I know in my soul there is more life in these things than I cared to admit. I remembered a time when I knew sunlight, and dappled water and laughter in corridors was the only pure life—that the savage wilderness was _other_, was wrong, shameful and inhuman and uncivilized, sick and diseased, rotten and disgusting and putrefying… and in the right of rights, I would return him to the simple, uncomplicated world of Hogwarts. But to be adult—and to be Remus Lupin—is to know there is light in other places as well. After all, I can think with a secret smile only in the dark, we Marauders were boys on summer-shine banks, and animals in the shadows—parents and university students and laughing café patrons, as well as survival-driven maniacs in dark alleys, surrounded and outnumbered, vicious and desperate.

I dared not think of him this way… but it crept upon me just as well, in all the imprecise vicissitudes I've seen of him… the smiling Quidditch seeker with a confident tread, the brooding loner, the flare of righteous anger and bewildered outrage—the wild screams of revenge—the savage fight to join Sirius in death, to destroy Bellatrix Lestrange—but hold. I pushed these thoughts away… but too late. I gripped his shoulder tighter even as I felt sunlight come through vague windows at the back of my eyes, saw white corridors….

_This is the story I would tell you, were I a braver man._

_A werewolf cannot have children. Nor can he adopt them—he is too dangerous. But the desire for a child—for companionship—for progeny—is stronger in a werewolf than in any other creature, including human beings. And I know then what you'll say: I am human. But it isn't true. It's others that make the werewolf human; and though my parents feared me and misunderstood what I was, they loved me in a way I fear you cannot remember, and thus do not know. James and Lily—as your parents, they belong to you; but as teenagers they belong to me—and there is no way to describe how I loved them. They were air. James and Sirius and Peter… air, Harry. They were my world for eleven long years. My happy memory._

_You are not a memory. You are here, living and breathing in my arms, a walking elegy. The day you were born, I looked into your eyes, your silent, watchful eyes, and I wanted you like I have wanted nothing else in all my life. In the green I saw a glance of immortality—the sun through leaves, jade shadows, emerald perception—and I became aware that reality had ceased to exist. I didn't notice Sirius's suspicious glance. I wanted to rip out his eyes and pull the hair from his bleeding scalp the day James declared him your Godfather, even though all logic pointed to it as the right and logical course down every path. And after that day, I found myself suspicious of him, and Peter ducked down beneath our notice when it should have been so damned obvious… _

_Were I a braver man, Harry, your world would be a very different place. I would like to tell you that the monster of war destroyed your parents—the monster of societal convention, the fear of a werewolf, the frenzy of loss… but there is another side of the truth. Sirius loved you—he loved you too much to see the truth. I loved you. I loved you too much to protect you from myself._

_And I haven't changed._

I tangled my hand in Harry's tousled, unruly hair, half-dreaming. I saw his bright eyes the day he was born, the way he called me 'Uncle Mooie' when he'd learned to talk, the adoring way in which he watched his father, the thrill with which he regarded Sirius, the content in his mother's arms, the moments of perfect happiness among us as we played with him or sat down to dinner and laughed as though the world were perfect—

And then the slight, millisecond hush, remembering that _one of us_ wanted him dead, that _one of us_ would dare to try and take him from us, that _one of us_ would destroy that perfect peace, and that we had to stop him at all costs. I smiled in the dark. Married to irony.

We sat, for the last time seemingly, together on opposite sides of the table that morning, and it only took a quirk of my eyes to ask him what he thought of Knowles's _A Separate Peace_.

"I haven't gotten very far—I don't like Finny all that much, though. He seems like a bully," he said sullenly; he was slightly embarrassed at the thought of the night before, as he is unused to crawling into the beds of others.

"Really?" I mused—Harry is very different from the sixteen-year-old James, and I am sometimes loathe and often thrilled to admit it. "This might just be an old man talking, but doesn't he strike you as much like all boys his age?"

Harry's eyes snapped up as though I'd offended him—I rather thought he believed me to be comparing his foolish recklessness to Finny—and, in doing so, again implicating him in Sirius's death.

"You're not old, Professor—Knowles is stupid if he really thinks sixteen is the natural age for anyone to be."

I was silent at this for a long while, and did not push the book further. It occurred to me then how much older he looked; how his cheeks were no longer pale white dove feathers and puppy down… how he was catapulting but already stagnating… perhaps I haven't a very healthy outlook on aging. I used to have nightmares about my teeth turning to wet sugar and crumbling—blame the cliché "sweet tooth" all you want—I was terrified all the same.

Neither of us breached the silence, until I knew that the bubble had to break eventually.

"Tonight's the full moon, Harry—I'll need you to stay in the house until morning." My voice was very calm, cool, unaffected. I was screaming inside.

He turned away, a clench in his jaw—I saw the hollow of his cheekbone as the mandible muscles worked tensely, heard the salivary glands stop, the fearful drying of his mouth, saw his throat tighten—the wolf whispered _Just reach out…_ It would be so easy to tear into the tendons, and feel their sanguine resistance… already my teeth had begun to elongate, I felt them jutting painfully out of my gums, the hum of static, a pulse of blood, some bright shell of power at my core whirring and setting reactions into place and catalyzing—the popping of joints in my fingers, rubber-band potential energy balling up into each one, gathering it all together to strike and tear and kill and consume and own and _know_… It was a struggle to stop his ears from hearing the powerful roar of a thunderous heartbeat ready to explode, my diaphragm which threatened to break, ragged gasps—_Get out of the room_ battling in the first, preliminary stages with another voice, deep and growing—_Don't you see how much I want you!_ Scholar's voice again, just at the back, sitting resignedly, watching the match with a touch of amusement: _he already knows, and he's using it_.

"You… you promised me, back in the Ministry, that you wouldn't leave me," he said, just when I thought he wouldn't answer me.

I took a shaking breath, not realizing I was speaking honestly. "Harry… when I become a wolf—I _do_ leave you. You don't know… you've got no way to understand…"

He half-turned; we're coming even in height; it was only then that I noticed, when sunset framed him in the kitchen door, his profile, his squared shoulders, the defiance in his jaw something akin to responsibility, a shadow in his eyes. When, I supposed, would he call me _Remus_, in that sober voice he sometimes gleans upon in moments of new clarity?

"Know what? What it's like to feel tainted, as though I'm not completely myself, as though I don't own my own soul? As though I'll suddenly lash out and take everyone I love down with me—infect them or poison them or endanger them or _kill_ them? You think you're teaching me something? You think I'm whole or undamaged or perfect just because I'm _young_? I see it, in the way you watch me when you think I'm not looking, the way you talk to me—you think I'm innocent, you think I'm like how you were when you were sixteen and seventeen and you're _wrong_. It excuses the fact that I killed Sirius, because I'm ignorant, because my world possesses some separate peace just like Devon the way Knowles wrote it—but Hogwarts isn't to me what it was to you, or what it is to Ron and Hermione—I've seen blood in its corridors, and I know Voldemort's mind, I know what he intends to do with it—I know that people who're boy and girls just playing stupid games turn into Lucius Malfoys and Bellatrix Lestranges, and kids who're funny and brave and get good marks turn into killers and get _killed_…" He ended on a strong note, a small strangle in his throat, as he looked into my face, something steely in his stare.

I was not prepared for this. I hadn't come to conclusions like his at sixteen—they came upon me gradually, and I profess I didn't dwell much on them as much as accepted them—they came on a November morning in glimmers, dull flashes off white porcelain, the steady sound of a _drip-drip_ outside a murky fog, a slow-motion rushing sound, flashes of faces in trees, familiar demons everywhere… Lily, James, Sirius, Peter, Harry, Lily, James… I could have been ticking off the names around rosary beads, savoring the customary, habitual nature of their sound; until I'd said them over and over so many times they lost their meaning: just words. Angels fall forever in the corner of our sight, the margins where vision blurs in tired nights, beautiful forms mutate with the slight relaxation of the retina when we stop toeing the line, and demons live in the shadows between dendrite and axon. Nothing is concrete, known, certain, or stationary—I know these things—yet I was not expecting this.

"You don't know… what it is to be _me_, Harry. I don't let you know. Professor Lupin—the person I am right now to your face, the person you talk to, the face you see—stops existing out there, in the forest. He has nothing to do with the wolf—Professor Lupin is the part of me that exists to counter everything that the wolf _is_ and does; you don't know who I am, or who I was, or how those people compile together to create the man that _I_ have to deal with, and who has to deal with the wolf. You didn't know me—you don't know the changes the wolf has made to me, you haven't seen the progression or felt the time, or lived in this house long enough to start _hearing things_ and _seeing things_ that nobody wants to acknowledge—but they're there, Harry, and I wish I hadn't ever seen them."

I blinked; he blinked; we both seemed to realize at the same simultaneous moment that I'd said more that I'd wanted to on the subject, that I was laid naked at his feet, that he was given the skeleton key to unlock the things within my mind that I'd concealed so artfully and so cleverly for so many years from the world, that were once such simple, innocent truths. I gasped slightly, a cold fanning around my cheeks, curse-magic creeping up my veins, ice on the surface of a lake, a pull around my follicles, each hair a lightening rod, each becoming coarser and fuller and longer, incrementally less like the invisible insulating layer of human flesh and more the pelt of something fierce and lupine—it began to push outward from my heart, a layer of meaning and sensing beyond myself, heavenly and hellish, enlightened and savage, advanced above me and debased below—I wondered if he'd find it beautiful.

"Stay in this house," Professor Lupin commanded; the wolf raged at the edges of his words, fire on the fringes licking upward, clawing to be set free on the other side of rice paper doors. "Promise me—promise you won't let me back in, you won't come looking for me _no matter what_ you hear or see—promise you'll be stronger than I am, Harry…"

My limbs were shaking; he'd been left speechless—but, looking into my face, seeing, I'm sure, his old Professor Lupin in those flashes I grabbed out from deep down within me, struggled to wave about just at the surface to make things okay for him, I saw him nod—oh, I wanted him to understand, wanted him to see the wolf clawing at my very eyes, watching him, causing my ears to prick at each move he made, take it in and file it away in some sinister cabinet for future reference—for when he would be my prey… And perhaps it occurred to me that my attempt at willful deception, this distancing from my capabilities, from the real danger he was in, from my own wants and desires, and my very real power to fulfill them, was creating the very prey that the wolf needed—but I continued to hide under that school teacher mask, drab and gray and indifferently adorned, far from the electric-bright moonlit thing I was to become, the sea of sun-drenched and bloody colors, the wave of sensations I held, and those I could give to him, and those we could gain together, two rather than one around a nucleus of bundled power and passion, around something uncoiling even as I turned from him—and it was the slowest movement I'd ever made, took every bit of strength in me not to drop down to him in love and, in a second he would never see but would mean everything in the world, send that powerful hand with energy longing to be released out upon his throat—and _run_. Teeth elongating. Hair coarsening. Currents buzzing. The smell of rapid-fire mitosis, the breaking of bones in a series of fearful snaps, skin cells struggling to keep up in a wave of bright curse magic coursing up and down and around me, up my spine, drove after drove of signals, the call of calories from every resource available, the stored energy in my body broken down by the curse and sent all into one place in the center of my chest—

I don't know what he saw. I don't know if he told me the truth, when we sat down, shaken, a few days later, to compare notes. I told him once that I remember everything I do after I transform—but what it is going through the wolf's mind isn't always fathomable to memory's hind-sighted vision. The truth is, I don't know at all how to describe the essence of the transformation; it is somewhere in this in-between place that flickers of understanding start to make their way forth; that the things we push to the backs of our minds, things we might glance at in twilight moments between sleep and waking, the things that burrow in the mud, that buzz around the kill, that creep in the margins, the lie in uncertainty, memory's dreams, the things we're sure never happened, start to stir.

"_When they get near me… I can hear Voldemort murdering my mum."_

"_I heard my dad… that's the first time I've ever heard him."_

"_I trusted you! And all this time you've been his friend?"_

"_I'm doing this because—I don't reckon my dad would've wanted them to become killers—just for you."_

"_You're not old, Professor—Knowles is stupid if he really thinks sixteen is the natural age for anyone to be."_

"_I've seen blood in its corridors… kids who are brave and funny and get good marks become killers and get killed… you think I'm innocent… and you're wrong."_

_Snap._

I didn't know if it was the door or my bones that made the sound. My legs crumpled under me even as I started away from the house, into the dark embrace of a new night… the moon was revealing herself from a layer of cloud cover—I heard screaming, and wondered briefly if I'd wandered into Harry's mind before I heard my own throat filled with blood erupt into a howl which ripped air out of my lungs, filling them with a deep cold—this time I had been ripped open, I must have been—a force slashed through my femur, splintered upward along the grain, my legs broke even after I fell, invisible hands snapping them like twigs in every place possible—the arms supporting me crumbled—what were pillars I believe so strongly in for my day-to-day life—walking through universities, browsing the shelves of books, fingers that flip pages and annotate and instruct and gesticulate during lecture—all descend with a popping, a crunching, a withering—as they're broken down into their elementary parts and rebuilt, into a monster.

And the voice that instructs, that gently reminds, that quietly suggests and persuades from the back of a room, grafted and garbled, the words were lost in nonsensical growls and whimpers and in the snarling and snapping of jaws—the eyes that observe from opaque curtains of reserve disappeared behind a flooding of broken blood vessels, before reemerging, bright and amber, flashing with night vision from the shadows—all in a magnificent buzz of sweeping blue and white electricity, the crackling, crying, sulfurous and cold, memories and whispers of lost generations, potential waiting and yet-to-be fulfilled, the heedless splendor of horror—Hell frequencies, only the werewolf can hear. The man… the man who is, to Harry, Professor Lupin—to the Order, Remus—to the Marauders, Moony—the Ministry, a faceless number—to Shadow Wood, a pedagogical recluse… the man at last was wrenched away from the nerves, in exchange for a shadow, who emerged in the blazing bright, howling triumph of curse-magic.


End file.
